Show Business

(Illustrated by Mel Hunter)

Show Business by Lyle G. Boyd and William C. Boyd (If Worlds of Science Fiction, November 1953)

Here's the behind-the-scenes lowdown on Luna City life and a promoter of Martian dancing girls, vaudeville, and—other things. But remember: stop us if you've heard this one!

The City & The City

I fully intended to read and review Ken St. Andre's books Dragon Child: Just A Thief From Khazan (ISBN: 9781438237855) & Griffin Feathers (ISBN: 9781438232263) this summer, but surprisingly they're not available via interlibrary loan. That's strange given that Ken is a librarian. You'd think that if anyone's books would be available at the library it would be a librarian's. So, with apologies to Ken, here instead is a review of China Miéville's novel, The City & The City.

The book is told in the first-person style of the classic roman noir. Our narrator is Tyador Borlú, a police inspector in the fictional Eastern European city of Besźel. When the body of a young woman is discovered in a skate park, Borlú finds himself involved in a case that is anything but ordinary.

But then Besźel itself is anything but ordinary. It is a twin city, existing alongside the culturally distinct city of Ul Qoma. These cities don't stand cheek-by-jowl like the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, but rather they overlap and interpenetrate each other. The are kept separate by custom and habit, by the practice of training the citizens of one to "unsee" the buildings and citizens of the other.

To violate this cultural taboo is a serious matter. It puts the individual in a state of "breach" and subjects them to the authority of the mysterious and powerful organization Breach. Few who fall into its hands are heard from again.

This central conceit of the novel is a multivalent device and pregnant with metaphor. Not only is it analogous to various historically divided geographies, such as Berlin, or Jerusalem, it also evokes more subtle cultural divides. It is evocative of the "unseeing" most citizens practice when confronted with the immeserated homeless populations on their own streets.

The novel's flaws are few and minor. By adopting the milieu of the roman noir to unfold his narrative, Miéville is subject to the strictures of that form, and one result is that the plot unfolds in rather routine fashion that seems at odds with the daring urban geography. And Miéville never captures the noir voice and cadence the way that, for example, Leigh Brackett did in her (conventional) hard-boiled masterpiece, No Good from a Corpse (1944).

But those slight shortcomings don't detract from the overall book. The City & The City is a subtle, imaginative and highly original novel that you won't want to unsee.

Astounding Stories (January 1931)

Another complete issue of editor Harry Bates' Astounding Stories, featuring another of S. P. Wrights' Star Trekish Commander John Hanson tales and a novelette by the renowned Murray Leinster.

“The Gate to Xoran.” by H. W. Wesso

Astounding Stories (January, 1931)

The Dark Side of Antri By Sewell Peaslee Wright

Commander John Hanson Relates an Interplanetary Adventure Illustrating the Splendid Service Spirit of the Men of the Special Patrol.


The Sunken Empire By H. Thompson Rich

Concerning the Strange Adventures of Professor Stevens with the Antillians on the Floor of the Mysterious Sargasso Sea.


The Gate to Xoran by Hal K. Wells

A Strange Man of Metal Comes to Earth on a Dreadful Mission.


The Eye of Allah By C. D. Willard

On the Fatal Seventh of September a Certain Secret Service Man Sat in the President’s Chair and—Looked Back into the Eye of Allah.


The Fifth-Dimension Catapult By Murray Leinster

The Story of Tommy Reames’ Extraordinary Rescue of Professor Denham and his Daughter—Marooned in the Fifth Dimension. (A Complete Novelette.)


The Pirate Planet By Charles W. Diffin

Two Fighting Yankees—War-Torn Earth’s Sole Representatives on Venus—Set Out to Spike the Greatest Gun of All Time. (Part Three of a Four-Part Novel.)

Astounding Stories (March, 1931)

A lone Golden Age story today, plus another complete issue of Astounding Stories, featuring stories by the late doyen of sf, Jack Williamson, and the prolific Harl Vincent.

Lonesome Hearts by Russell Robert Winterbotham (If Worlds of Science Fiction, July 1954)

"Mjly is Yljm's love life. She is her sisters, her mothers, herselves and her ancestors. But poor old Yljm can never be a mother or a sister—just himself!"

"Beyond the Vanishing Point" by H. W. Wesso

Astounding Stories (March, 1931)

When the Mountain Came To Miramar By Charles W. Diffin

It is Magic against Magic As Garry Connell Bluffs for His Life with a Prehistoric Savage in the Heart of Sentinel Mountain.

Beyond the Vanishing Point By Ray Cummings

The Tale of a Golden Atom—an Astounding Adventure in Size. (A Complete Novelette.)

Terrors Unseen By Harl Vincent

One after Another the Invisible Robots Escape Shelton's Control—and Their Trail Leads Straight to the Gangster Chief Cadorna.

Phalanxes of Atlans By F. V. W. Mason

Never Did an Aviator Ride a More Amazing Sky-Steed Than Alden on His Desperate Dash to the Great Jarmuthian Ziggurat. (Conclusion of a Two-Part Novel.)

The Meteor Girl By Jack Williamson

Through the Complicated Space-Time of the Fourth Dimension Goes Charlie King in an Attempt to Rescue the Meteor Girl.

Ig Nobel Stargate

Well, I tuned in the SeeFee channel last night and sat through the premiere of Stargate Universe, even though I'm not much of a fan of the franchise. (As far as I'm concerned it's like a tedious combination of pulp sf cliches and military recruiting commercial.) This was always going to be Stargate: Voyager so I wasn't too surprised to realize within the first few minutes that I was watching Lost in Space. The show starts with the stargate equivalent of a plane crash, with people and luggage flying everywhere; they're stranded in a mysterious location far from home; we get to know the main characters through a series of flashbacks; etc., etc. Weak, too say the least. I usually watch at least three episodes of a show before I form a judgement, but SGU is so unoriginal I don't plan to waste anymore time on it.

More enjoyable is the fact that the Ig Nobel Prizes were recently awarded which "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The corporate media only seem to be focused on the "gas mask bra", by which they mean the Public Health Prize awarded to "Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander." A far cry from a "gas mask" if you ask me. But my favorite was the physics prize awarded to a team of researchers "for analytically determining why pregnant women don't tip over." Science!

Triplanetary

E. E. "Doc" Smith's classic space opera Triplanetary has been available from Project Gutenberg (and ManyBooks) for years, but they just updated it. And don't forget, this is the original magazine version from the pages of Amazing Stories (January, February, March and April 1934) and not the later Fantasy Press version which was retconned into the Lensman series. So if you've only read the revised version you might want to revisit this ripping tale of super-science, space pirates and alien invaders.

(Covers by Leo Morey)

Little Brother

Today something more than the usual the Golden Age SF from Project Gutenberg.

Cover by Yuko Shimizu

Little Brother (2008) by Cory Doctorow

"The novel is about several teenagers in San Francisco who, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, defend themselves against what they see as the Department of Homeland Security's attacks on the Bill of Rights. The novel is also available free on the author's website, as a Creative Commons download."  Copyright © 2007 by Cory Doctorow.

(Cover by Schoenherr)

Gone Fishing by James H. Schmitz (Analog Science Fact & Fiction, May 1961)

"There is no predictable correlation between intelligence and ethics, nor is ruthlessness necessarily an evil thing. And there is nothing like enforced, uninterrupted contemplation to learn to distinguish one from another...."